about

Photo Credit: Cory Shaw | Published: 12-30-2015

Hello! Thanks for visiting my about page. If you’re reading this, we should probably be friends. On this page I’ll write more about my background, but if you want to know what I’m up to right now, check out the “now” page.

I was born in Orlando, Florida. When I turned six my parents moved us to Denver, Colorado, where I got to see this weird white stuff they called snow for the first time.

Colorado is where I did most of my growing up. In my younger years I was a typical delinquent kid that enjoyed ding-dong doorbell ditching, playing with fire, stealing stuff (eventually got caught), and throwing dirt clods.

When I started high school I got into playing the drums, so like a true nerd I joined the high school marching band playing the snare drum (this was the coolest instrument to play by the way). I also had an athletic side to me, so I joined the lacrosse team and played that weird sport for two years in high school.

Eventually I got burnt out on marching band, the drums, and lacrosse, so I traded them in for cigarettes, skateboards, and guitars, which occupied the rest of my high school years along with less-than-ideal grades.

During my senior year of high school a friend got me to enroll in a special pre-college graphic design class with him. That was where I discovered my love for art and design, and what eventually led me to enroll in a graphic design college.

After graduating high school I moved to Phoenix, Arizona to attend a design school. I got to study design from one of the best schools in the field, and graduated with an Associates degree in Visual Communications two years later. This was right around the time the web was starting to take off, so I decided to take another course in Web and Multimedia programing.

After spending 3 long years in the hot desert sun, I decided to move back home to Colorado to kick off my career.

The first 7 years or so of my career was spent working as a user interface designer and information architect for small design agencies and a hand full of companies that were all part of the same mega travel corporation.

After getting burnt out working for a big corporation, I decided to play my hand in the startup game. In 2006 I sold everything I owned and moved to Hawaii with my girlfriend to join a technology startup.

In the next few years that followed I fell in love with the island life. I surfed every day, worked my ass off, and spent what little down time I had hiking and hanging out at the beach. Two years after moving to HI, I got married to my amazing wife and later we had our first daughter.

At the worst time possible, with a new baby and a wife on maturity leave, the startup folded and I became jobless. With nothing left to loose, I started User Kind, Inc., we packed up our things, and moved to the North Shore of Oahu to work remotely steps from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

After living on Oahu for 6 years, we decided to once again sell everything we owned and move back to Colorado. It was a tough decision, but it was the right one. We ended up landing in beautiful Boulder, CO where I live and work today.